I've been testing 3CX 8.0 and the new 9.0 version. I notice the 3CX call parking/pickup featue is still a big deal and complicate for alot of end users. Even I'm a tech guy and I'm still feeling the call parking process is hard to use. Here is my experience with 3CX call parking/pickup.
1. You have to blind transfer the call to "*0x". This is a problem because not all the phones or soft phones have the blind transfer button. If the phone doesn't have a blind transfer hard/soft key, how can I park the call? I ran into this problem when I setup an extension with an analog dummy phone and ATA adapter. The dummy analog phone has only 10 digit keys, *, # and hold button. I couldn't figure out how to park the call with this setup. I put away with those two crappy equipments and put an advance equipment - Cisco 7971 phone. With the default key map on the Cisco 7971, it only offers transfer softkey when the phone is off hook. I can't transfer the call to the parking orbit with the transfer key because no blind transfer softkey is available. I know I can modify some xml file in the Cisco provisioning directory to remap the keys and get the blind transfer key to show up when the phone is on offhook mode, but it just adds too much extra works for testing/eval users.
To resolve this issue, I think 3CX needs to add a new feature call "Offhook dailing code". That means the user can dial some codes to engage some basic features such as transfer, blind transfer, park or hold while they are talking on the phone. For example, if we can use "**" to represent the "Transfer" feature, the user can do "**1#" to transfer the call to parking slot 1 or "**101#" to transfer the call to extension 101.
2. Mutiple key touch to park/pickup the call is too much for end users. It also tough to program into the softkey for alot of phones. So far I haven't found a way to program one button park on any phone.
I hope 3CX can just make the parking simpler in the future. One method I thought about is to be able to just hit "***" on the keypad, the PBX just parks the call on the first available parking orbit and make an annoncement to my phone such as "orbit 1" or "orbit 5" before the call hangs up. I then can pickup the call again by hitting "**1" or "**5".
3. Multiple calls can be parked in the same orbit is bad, very bad. I've spent a few months on this and still not able to fingure out how to present this feature as an advantage to the customer. Every customer who tried the software complains it almost immidiately. The most complain user is the recepionist. If she parks 10 calls in the same orbit *00, nobody can pickup the correct caller because dailing "*10" is going to pickup the first parked call. It maybe a way to pickup the later parked call from the same orbit. However, the receptionist is going to loss track the position of the callers if the callers were placed in the same orbit. For example, if the reception parked 5 calls in orbit 0. The first caller is John, the second is Mike, the third is Rose, the fourth is Jay, the fifth is Kim. She makes annoncement, "Eric, John is on park 0, Bob, Mike is in park 0...." If Bob gets to the phone first and dial *10, he is going to pick John. He realizes he picks up the wrong caller and he parks the caller back to orbit 0 again. Bob then calls the receptionist and ask "where did you park Mike?" She will have no answer because the order of the calls in the parking orbit has changed. She will not be able to figure out which one is Mike because the 3CX assistant only shows the caller phone numbers not names.
What I am hoping is the parking should never overlap. Each caller should be in its own slot. Call parking system allocate the slot automatically. When the call parks in different slot, the receptionist can just write it down on a paper if the called party doesn't pick it up for 5 minutes or more and forget where the calling party was parked.
3. When I started to learn how to park the call in version 8.0, I don't know how many times I did it wrong before I remember the correct key comination. In the beginning, I used "transfer *00 transfer", as soon as I hear " call forbidin by administrator", the calling party was dropped. This wrong key entry doesn't give me a chance to correct it instead of drop the caller is very bad.
I think 3CX needs to make the parking orbit to be callable. In this case, if I need to park a call, I put the caller on hold first, than I call the parking and get an avaiable slot, and than transfer the caller in the orbit. Ideally, if I can simply press a key and let the PBX figure out how to park the call is the best method.
Anyway, this deadly call parking problem just prevents me to sell it to my customer. 3CX should consider rework on this feature in the future beacuse it'm the most important feature.
:arrow: :arrow: :arrow:
1. You have to blind transfer the call to "*0x". This is a problem because not all the phones or soft phones have the blind transfer button. If the phone doesn't have a blind transfer hard/soft key, how can I park the call? I ran into this problem when I setup an extension with an analog dummy phone and ATA adapter. The dummy analog phone has only 10 digit keys, *, # and hold button. I couldn't figure out how to park the call with this setup. I put away with those two crappy equipments and put an advance equipment - Cisco 7971 phone. With the default key map on the Cisco 7971, it only offers transfer softkey when the phone is off hook. I can't transfer the call to the parking orbit with the transfer key because no blind transfer softkey is available. I know I can modify some xml file in the Cisco provisioning directory to remap the keys and get the blind transfer key to show up when the phone is on offhook mode, but it just adds too much extra works for testing/eval users.
To resolve this issue, I think 3CX needs to add a new feature call "Offhook dailing code". That means the user can dial some codes to engage some basic features such as transfer, blind transfer, park or hold while they are talking on the phone. For example, if we can use "**" to represent the "Transfer" feature, the user can do "**1#" to transfer the call to parking slot 1 or "**101#" to transfer the call to extension 101.
2. Mutiple key touch to park/pickup the call is too much for end users. It also tough to program into the softkey for alot of phones. So far I haven't found a way to program one button park on any phone.
I hope 3CX can just make the parking simpler in the future. One method I thought about is to be able to just hit "***" on the keypad, the PBX just parks the call on the first available parking orbit and make an annoncement to my phone such as "orbit 1" or "orbit 5" before the call hangs up. I then can pickup the call again by hitting "**1" or "**5".
3. Multiple calls can be parked in the same orbit is bad, very bad. I've spent a few months on this and still not able to fingure out how to present this feature as an advantage to the customer. Every customer who tried the software complains it almost immidiately. The most complain user is the recepionist. If she parks 10 calls in the same orbit *00, nobody can pickup the correct caller because dailing "*10" is going to pickup the first parked call. It maybe a way to pickup the later parked call from the same orbit. However, the receptionist is going to loss track the position of the callers if the callers were placed in the same orbit. For example, if the reception parked 5 calls in orbit 0. The first caller is John, the second is Mike, the third is Rose, the fourth is Jay, the fifth is Kim. She makes annoncement, "Eric, John is on park 0, Bob, Mike is in park 0...." If Bob gets to the phone first and dial *10, he is going to pick John. He realizes he picks up the wrong caller and he parks the caller back to orbit 0 again. Bob then calls the receptionist and ask "where did you park Mike?" She will have no answer because the order of the calls in the parking orbit has changed. She will not be able to figure out which one is Mike because the 3CX assistant only shows the caller phone numbers not names.
What I am hoping is the parking should never overlap. Each caller should be in its own slot. Call parking system allocate the slot automatically. When the call parks in different slot, the receptionist can just write it down on a paper if the called party doesn't pick it up for 5 minutes or more and forget where the calling party was parked.
3. When I started to learn how to park the call in version 8.0, I don't know how many times I did it wrong before I remember the correct key comination. In the beginning, I used "transfer *00 transfer", as soon as I hear " call forbidin by administrator", the calling party was dropped. This wrong key entry doesn't give me a chance to correct it instead of drop the caller is very bad.
I think 3CX needs to make the parking orbit to be callable. In this case, if I need to park a call, I put the caller on hold first, than I call the parking and get an avaiable slot, and than transfer the caller in the orbit. Ideally, if I can simply press a key and let the PBX figure out how to park the call is the best method.
Anyway, this deadly call parking problem just prevents me to sell it to my customer. 3CX should consider rework on this feature in the future beacuse it'm the most important feature.
:arrow: :arrow: :arrow:
Phone System 